jack grimes

Nick Swartz on smoking & drinking in the Rust Belt: Another great piece on American psychogeography from the "Towns USA" guy.

A Visual Guide to Alien Beings by David Chace: I uploaded the best copy of this I could find to arena but if anybody knows where I can get a high-res version please let me know. There's so many great little guys in here.

Ultimate Businessfunk: A two-hour compilation of all of Datassette's Businessfunk mixtapes of extremely tight vintage library music.

Richmond, Virginia: Got to spend some time down there over the holiday, since my grandma lives nearby and my sister just got an apartment off the Fan. Richmond rules. I would live there in a heartbeat if it wasn't 100 degrees and swampy from May to September.

Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear: I read The Forge of God at the end of last year and enjoyed it a lot, then put off getting into Anvil until Alex Brady recommended it. It's really, really good--a story about a crew of children tasked by an advanced alien race with avenging the destruction of the Earth by their own judgement and abilities.

Conservative Comedy Ruined My Life: This is a really good video essay (getting increasingly rare!) that examines conservative comedy, its inability to work outside its target audience ever, and imo does a great job being entertaining without the presentation getting weighed down by doing jokes all the time.

The Nostalgia Critic and The Wall: I avoided this one a while ago when I was watching a lot of Dan Olson because I do not know anything about the "Nostalgia Critic" and generally find that genre of guy really off-putting, but it was referenced in the conservative-comedy essay so I finally checked it out.

Grape Soda: I was a grape soda hater for years and then I was randomly thinking about it while at the bodega the other night and I grabbed a Sunkist. Actually pretty good.